Page 42 of Finding the Pieces

“Did you come to one of these before?” I ask softly, knowing he’s had his own struggles. He nods. “Did it help?” He nods again.

“Jake brought me here back when we were working together and hadn’t started…”

“Fucking each other’s brains out?” Dee interjects casually, zipping up her neon yellow jumpsuit.

As usual, Dee cuts the tension from any situation with the most perfect timing, and my shoulders relax for the first time since I stepped into Ruby’s lovely establishment.

“Yeah,” Chris says, chuckling, the vibrations rolling off him in waves while he’s holding me. “He could see I was going through something; I was having areally difficult day—a shitty month, really. My depression was the worst it had been in years and my meds needed adjusted. I was suffocating under the weight of it. He didn’t ask me what was going on. He didn’t make me talk, but he looked at me like he knew. He asked if he could take me somewhere, and he brought me here.”

“What happened?” I ask, having never heard this story before. A rare occurrence. I’ve known Chris and Jake for years. They were already married when I met Dom. The four of us have been close ever since Dom and I started dating.

“We joked around and eye-fucked each other while we smashed some heavy shit. Afterward, we went our separate ways until work the following Monday.”

I give him a look.

“At the time, I didn’t have the words. I never did when I got that low. My brain felt so far from my body. I hadn’t felt good for weeks. Jake could tell I had hit a wall and needed to release the energy. I wouldn’t lie to you, sis…it helped. I can’t explain why or how, but when we left, it was like so much of the shit floating around my head, mucking everything up, stayed in that room, torn to pieces, shattered on the floor. I didn’t take it with me. And when Dom asked me what I wanted to do for my piece of the puzzle, I thought…I mean, I know it’s different, but I thought it could help you too. To let some things stay here. To let some things go.”

His words cause my stomach to lurch, because he described it perfectly. The disconnect between my mind and my body has been a riddle I can’t solve. Probably another residual effect of trauma, my mind trying to protect me. Even though it’s all over, I still have no idea how to find my way back to myself.

“If it helped you, then I’m willing to give it a try. Let’s do this,” I say with a smile.

“There’s our girl,” Dee says with a smile that screams trouble. She takes my hand and pulls me to a table with a binder that looks one rough turn away from falling apart. “Now that you’re all in, I need you to make the two most important decisions of your entire life.”

“Most important decisions of my entire life? Not who I’ll spend my life with or whether or not I should have a child?”

“Eh.” She shrugs. “Anyway,focus. I need you to pick your tool and your tunes.”

“Oh…my…god,” I whisper, and I can’t hold back the huge grin overtaking my expression. “I get to pick a song?”

“Pick a song? We aren’t half-assing anything today. I bribed Ruby. You get to DJ for all of the rooms for the next hour,” Dee says, her eyebrows rising in challenge.

“Hand me the bat,” I say, reaching out an open palm.

“With pleasure,” Dee says, fitting the cool aluminum into my grip.

***

“Should we stop her?” Chris asks, concern evident in his tone.

“Hm? Nah, she’s good. We still have eight minutes left of this glorious production.”

Dee and Chris lean against the door to the rage room. There’s glass, metal, wood, and who knows what other materials shattered and scattered on the concrete floor. A rainbow of fresh paint covers almost every surface, and I’m breathing heavily from the physical exertion.

God, it feels good to move.

“What do you think?” Dee calls out. “Something new or run it again?”

“Run it!” I shout before bringing the hammer down on a stack of dishes with a loud crash.

“Again, please, Ms. Ruby,” Dee says, her finger holding down the intercom near the exit. Within seconds, the music picks up and I can hear the muffled cheering from the group of guys in the room next door, followed quickly by a series of loud thumps as they tear their own room apart.

I’m grateful they approve of my song choice.

Yes, I pickedonesong to play on repeat for the entire hour we were allotted to trash this room. Because in a movie,thisis what I’d want to hear playing in a slow-motion montage while the three of us hop around this beat-upcinderblock of a room in our neon jumpsuits, headgear, gloves, and safety glasses, breaking it all into a million pieces.

The slow-paced staccato guitar run trickles through the speakers before the percussion picks up. Bosson’s “One in a Million”has been the soundtrack—on repeat—to this epic battle between me and the dinnerware.

The song plays through one more time, and when it ends, I pull off the glasses and gloves and wipe my forehead with the back of my hand. Sweat is dripping down my body. I can’t remember the last time I worked this hard. Even Chris has a sheen of sweat over his dark brown skin, and the short hairs around Dee’s neck are damp and curling with sweat.

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